I’m considering the end to my Kaieteur columns

Jul 22, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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There has always been an element of weird departure in Guyanese politics since early time that goes back to the fifties.

There tends to be an overlapping of relations among political enemies that is surprising. But, more significantly, there tend to be coalitions and mergers that have been, and are, absolutely stunning.

Do you know that when Jagan and Burnham split in the fifties, the bourgeois Indians rallied around Burnham and the middle class African intellectuals sided with Jagan?

The elitist, light-complexioned group, the National Democratic Party (NDP), was the kind of entity that would have looked down on the People’s National Congress (PNC), whose main leaders were dark-skinned Africans without commercial properties to their names or high up in the education ladder.

Surprisingly, the NDP subsumed itself under the PNC. When Paul Tennassee formed the Democratic Labour Movement (DLM), he was in uncontrollable rage against the PPP.

Tennassee was the reincarnation of Brindley Benn. Suddenly, in 1992, the DLM and the PPP agreed to enter the election on the same platform (the deal fell through).

Manzoor Nadir was so hooked on capitalism and Peter D’Aguiar that he single-handedly tried to resurrect D’Aguiar capitalist organization, the United Force. Nadir advocated US sanctions against the PPP Government if it continued trade relations with Cuba.

Then, in the immediate, violent aftermath of the 2001 elections, capitalist ethics gave way to ethnic consciousness when Nadir declared that East Indian people must stick together.

From thereon he has ditched D’Aguiar’s capitalist way for a group of people who, though not practising communism, are at the psychic level embracers of Marxism-Leninism.

Then there were the unpredictable circumstances of Miles Fitzpatrick. With wide sympathies for the WPA, Mr. Fitzpatrick became one of GECOM’s PPP commissioners.

Brindley Benn took the cake. Never have I seen a politician that hated another one the way Benn despised Cheddi Jagan.

This was a persistent attitude that Mr. Benn manifested for over twenty years. Then, to the surprise of every Guyanese (I suppose), he rejoined the PPP for the 1992 election.

Finally, there is Mr. Ravi Dev. Mr. Dev seems to be gravitating towards a radical break with his original praxis. Mr. Dev has chosen me as the object from which he will seek his new politics.

In his Sunday column two weeks ago, in rejecting Eusi Kwayana’s description of elected dictatorship in Guyana, Mr. Dev repeated his anti-Kissoon accusation five times.

It goes like this: in labelling the PPP an elected dictatorship and delineating forms of state power that are worse than under Burnham’s autocracy, I am likely to invite violent attacks on the Government.

According to Mr. Dev in his July 13 KN column, these statements of elected dictatorship, “Serve to justify the actions of those who had chosen violence to remove them (‘them’ being the Government).”
Try to visualise what Dev is pontificating on.

A violent person who hates the Government reads the Freddie Kissoon column and yells out, “Hey, Freddie says the PPP Government is just like Burnham. In fact, Freddie believes the PPP may be worse than Burnham.

This is nonsense, man, let’s go and attack the Government.” Mr. Dev has not granted me the courtesy of replying to a question that I have directed to him four times – what about policy-action of the Government that may cause violent reaction from those who think that the Government is practicing cruel hegemony?

After he repeated his mantra on July 13, I have decided that I will consult precious persons whose political judgement I deeply respect.

The list includes Eusi Kwayana, Moses Bhagwan, Josh Ramsammy and others, especially those who fought against dictatorship in the seventies.

I will ask them to ponder profoundly Dev’s theorising in relation to my categorisation of the Government of Guyana as an elected dictatorship.

Do they believe that my discovery of four forms of atrophied state behaviour under the PPP, which were absent under Burnham, together with my classification of the Guyana Government as an elected dictatorship, is a dangerous thought that will invite violent assault on the state and its high personnel?

Do they believe that Mr. Dev is right? I will also request that they deal with my question to Dev, that is, are some of the egregious policies of the Government playing into the hands of the violent insurgents?

If these people think that yes, my analysis of the Government has gone too far and Mr. Dev has been right in pointing out the dangerous pitfalls in some of my adumbrations, then that is it; I will bring my Kaieteur News page to an end. If their thinking is on the contrary, then I will carry on with my service to the Guyanese people.

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